An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…

I confess, were these Bishops in the right, that Sancta Clara citeth, that say, The ignorant people might merit by hating God, as an act of obedience, if their Pastors should tell them it is their duty; then this external obedience to them were more considerable: But I had rather go in the Company that goeth to Heaven (as all do that are true Lovers of God and man) than in that which goeth to Hell (as do the most Regular of the ungodly). And yet I account true obedience, and regularity, a great duty of the godly, and a great help to godliness. ⟨p. 116⟩And therefore I value the Means for the End, Concord for Piety and salvation. And I cannot think, that there is not now in London, a very laudable degree of Concord among all those that, though in different Assemblies, and with difference of opinions about small matters, do hold one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one Celestial hope, and one God and Father of all, and live in Love, and Peace and Patience towards each other: This is far greater Concord than the thousands of people, that deserving excommunication for their wicked lives, do hold in the bosom of the Church, which receiveth them as children thereof. And O! were it not for that uncharitable impatience, which an ill selfish Spirit doth contain, why should it seem to us a matter of such odium, envy, or out-cry, for men to hear the same Gospel from another man, which for some differing opinion they will not hear from us? Or for men to communicate, e. g. standing, or sitting in a Congregation of that mind, that (weakly) scruple to kneel at it with others (the old Canons countenancing their gesture of standing, more than kneeling) What harm will it do me, if (under the strictest Laws of Peace) men worshipped God by themselves, that scruple some word, or action in our worship? E. g. a Nestorian that should think, that it is improper to say, that the Virgin Mary was [Greek or Hebrew], and that the denomination should be a ratione formali, rather than a materially: Would Liberty in such matters, with Love and Peace, do more hurt to the Churches than Schismatical excommunications have done? And indeed it is hard to make people able to reconcile a Conjunct earnestness, in driving the same men into the Church, and casting them out;

I confess, were these Bishops in the right, that Sancta Clara citeth, that say, The ignorant people might merit by hating God, as an act of obedience, if their Pastors should tell them it is their duty; then this external obedience to them were more considerable: But I had rather go in the Company that goeth to Heaven (as all do that are true Lovers of God and man) than in that which goeth to Hell (as do the most Regular of the ungodly). And yet I account true obedience, and regularity, a great duty of the godly, and a great help to godliness.